Ethical Decision Making Under Time Pressure: An Online Study

Abstract

Although research in Psychology and Philosophy indicates people’s preference for utilitarian ethics, how people respond to ethically fraught scenarios under time pressure is unclear. In this online experiment, 61 participants viewed videos of a simulated automated vehicle (AV) as it drove in the right lane on a four-lane road and were instructed to intervene if they thought that the vehicle should move to the left lane. At a crosswalk, five pedestrian avatars appeared one, two, or three seconds before projected impact either in the path of the vehicle or the left lane, with a single pedestrian appearing in the opposite lane half the time. Participants avoided the group of five (utilitarian response) but were more likely to veer into the group of five pedestrians at one second before impact than longer durations, violating utilitarian ethics under time pressure. This suggests limited ability to respond to ethical scenarios when taking over AV control at short notice.

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